Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

"Hi, rat-breath," Oskar murmured to Cezer as the male cat sat down beside him on his blond haunches. "Hello, piddle-pants. How's it going?" "Better, now. What brings you here? Miss me?" The tomcat spat derisively. "Like I'd miss being locked in a bath."

"I thought you'd run off to stuff your feline face full of meatfruit in the oh-so-accommodating Commons."

Daintily, Cezer raised his left foreleg and began to lick the underside of his paw. "No, thanks. I had my fill of paradise." Oskar was panting softly. "And what did you decide about it?"

Deigning to glance in the dog's direction, Cezer replied curtly, "It's boring," and resumed cleaning his other forefoot.

It was growing late when the Honorable Cooble Pilk finally threw up his hairy hands and part of his lunch in frustration.

"Enough already! At this rate we'll be here till the End of Faerie. Not to mention that I'll miss the second half of my game. Noble but long-winded barristers, I implore you—step back, if you please." Clutching their briefcases to their chests like shields, Horglum, Grugle, and Migwig were quick to comply.

"Theft is theft. The conviction stands," the judge declaimed. From the rear wall of the chamber, a spread-eagled Quoll snarled satisfaction while the pair of vampire bats flanking him like mounted butterflies squeaked delightedly. "However, bearing in mind the energetic defense mounted by this most distinguished team of nit-picking obfuscators"—the legal trio bowed appreciatively—"I have determined to reduce the sentence."

From where he was seated, Oskar looked up hopefully. Beside him, Mamakitty leaned forward, the twitching of her tail stilled. Everyone eyed the judge in expectant silence.

"I, the Right Honorable Judge Cooble Pilk, senior magistrate of the exceedingly superior court of the Kingdom of Purple, do hereby order that the prisoners be banished forever from the Kingdom of Purple and the Realms of Faerie back to their revoltingly commonplace place of residence, there to be released into exile with the promise never to return."

The courtroom dissolved into chaos.

A joyful Mamakitty rose to wrap her legs around a wide-eyed, disbelieving Cocoa. Taj let out a piercing whistle of delight. An excited Oskar began barking wildly. Disputatious spectators leaped from their seats to exchange harsh words and energetic blows. Peeling himself off the back wall with a tremendous effort of will, the outraged Quoll snatched a knife from a startled troll. Holding it firmly in his mouth, he darted forward, heading straight for Mamakitty. The incredible energy and natural agility of his kind saw him sprint through the flailing grasp of several massive but sluggish guards.

Raising both hands, Judge Cooble Pilk proceeded to execute the sentence he had just pronounced. Faerie lightning crackled around his wrinkled brow and hovered above the tips of his prominent ears. Rising from the floor, the two lengths of his gargantuan powdered wig hovered above and behind him like a pair of gigantic lavender antennae. A roaring filled Oskar's ears, and a singular pressure blocked his sinuses, as if he had suddenly become trapped underwater. Out of the corner of an eye he saw the snarling Quoll leap, the tip of the knife held between his jaws aimed at Mamakitty's throat. Smegden let out a warning squeak as Cocoa had the presence of mind to take up the handle of Taj's cage between her teeth.

At the same time, Samm struck. Having quietly bided his time, the great serpent burst his constraining splints with a show of power only a fully grown python could muster. His jaws parted wide as his blunt head shot through the air toward the flying Quoll—and past the raging, apoplectic animal, to snatch up in his teeth the rod in the evidence box on which was transfixed a softly pulsing sphere of concentrated white light. Dazed and benumbed, Oskar thought he heard both bats squeal out a startled "No!" from the back of the courtroom.

Then the numbness overwhelmed him, nausea curdled the contents of his stomach, and something cold washed over his face. Suddenly, he couldn't breathe.

Kicking frantically, he burst free of the smothering dampness, his head exploding through the surface of the swirling pool of clear, cold water that lay at the base of the Shalouan Falls. Spitting out water, sputtering at the unexpected icy contact, he began to dog-paddle toward the rocky shore, shaking his head and sending sparkling droplets flying from the ends of his long hair. He was back home and alive, but something had changed. When he reached, exhausted, for the first projecting rocks of the shoreline, he realized immediately what had happened.

In the instant of being banished by the Really Impressively Irritable Honorable Judge Cooble Pilk from the Kingdom of Purple to their homeland, they had reverted back to the exact same enchanted forms they had inhabited on the day they had left it.

Like it or not, he was human again.

He was also naked, and seriously waterlogged. Searching his immediate surroundings, he saw his companions pulling themselves out of the river onto the damp, mist-slickened rocks to the left of the falls. Ravishingly long-legged Cocoa was wringing water out of her hair. Taj stood nearby, shouting and gesturing to him as the songster picked pieces of broken metal cage off his shoulders. Oskar waved back and called out that he was okay, even though he was not sure he could be heard above the roaring of the falls.

"That worked out Very well, I think," Taj told him when the latter joined the rest of the group. "Everything happened so fast, I was worried that one or two of us might have been overlooked. But the judge was very thorough."

"Didn't want to be late for his game," Cezer remarked from nearby. "I don't think I'd like to play with him."

Tilting back his head, Oskar looked upward, squinting against the leaden but welcome sunshine. Though dominated by the omnipresent drabness that had been imposed by the Mundurucu, the daylight in which they now found themselves was a welcome change from all the monocolored alien skies they had trekked beneath during the past weeks. Before them, the permanent rainbow born of the falls still bloomed with vibrant color, a beacon of normality shining forth in the midst of an otherwise all-pervasive grayness.

A sudden thought made him look around sharply. "Where's Samm?"

"Over here!" Emerging from the woods that filled the canyon, the dour giant waved encouragingly. In his huge right hand rested the radiant orb of white light from the Celebrated Grand Mystic Museum of the Exalted Kingdom of Purple. Oskar's heart leaped.

"You got away with it!"

Joining them, the giant nodded slowly, looking slightly abashed. "I fixated on it the instant we entered the courtroom. I was waiting for the right moment to strike, hoping I might be able to slip into a drain hole or a gutter with it. Then the judge changed our sentence, and everything went crazy at once." Holding the globe high, he squinted at the precious luminosity. "I was afraid I might swallow it. The instant I changed back to this shape, I spit it out into a hand. Handy things to have, hands."

They gazed in silence at the lambent sphere. Now that they were back home, or nearly so, each of the travelers was more than a little awed at what they had accomplished. It was Cezer who, a little self-consciously, broke the reverie.

"All right—we've done the thing. What do we do now?"

Cocoa frowned at him. "What do you mean? We've gone through the rainbow, crossed all the kingdoms of light, and brought back the essence of white light the Master enjoined us to find."

He nodded agreeably. "So we have. And now that we have, what do we do with it? Does it go into a stew, or some kind of potion? Are there special words that need to be pronounced over it before anything happens?" He indicated the enveloping grayness that surrounded them. "Clearly, it doesn't do anything by itself. Just bringing it back here isn't enough. Something more has to be done. Something's lacking."